


Spider, Shadow, Soldier, Spy

by nessundorma345 (wastrelwoods)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M, woowee this went dark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-18
Updated: 2013-05-18
Packaged: 2017-12-12 05:56:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/808081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wastrelwoods/pseuds/nessundorma345
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It begins the way no story ever should: with a blood-soaked ledger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spider, Shadow, Soldier, Spy

It takes three days for her to notice him. A shadow among shadows, /her/ shadow. It feels...strangely possessive, calling him that. She wonders if he thinks of her as /his/ mark, and decides that the odds are slim. Doubtless she is not his first mark.   If she ever bothered to count (she has always counted, keeps a ledger soaked in remorseless blood), he would be her one hundred and seventy-fifth.

She sees him first in Krakow, at the ball where she stabs her mark--MOD man, number 173--with her shoe after he defects. A glance, and barely that, eyes meet from across the room before hers slide to the target, and the memory stick in his jacket pocket. Hardly interesting, which is a pity. She does enjoy a challenge every now and again. And it's hardly a challenge to get the man alone, take him down, slip the memory stick from his pocket, leave her calling card. A routine murder, she thinks bitterly.

Her shadow, he proves himself to be a worthy challenge. The second time she sees him is in Belarus, the outline of a man jumping the short gap between buildings. She loses him (thinks that she loses him) quickly, but the distraction loses her her new mark--she isn't told what or why, but he is number 174--and she is required to follow him to London.

The day after she finishes the job, she finds him again (he finds her, infuriating slippery shadow). He buys her a drink, the barmaid hands her the daiquiri nervously, and she quirks her blood-red lips in a winsome smile. Only seventeen assassins buy a drink for their mark before a hit, and none of them are like this one. Perhaps she /is/ his first mark. How delightful. She searches for him, staring into the darkness above her, and when the bullet clips her temple she doesn't see it coming.

/She does not see it coming/. The thought alone terrifies her, that this shadow may be more than a match even for her. She ducks out of the bar hurriedly, pulling back the hammer of her handguns and fingering the knives hidden in her boot, her garter belt, her hairpin. He does not come for her, will not finish the job tonight, and that is the second time she has underestimated this shadow, which has never happened before.

So she slips inside, to find a clue, calm her nerves with a drink not bought by the one who follows her  (intends to kill her, has a good reason to kill her, might actually kill her), and discovers the daiquiri. It sits unassuming in her place at the bar, a single red drop of her blood marring the crystal surface of the glass and turning it to rubies. Beside it sits a note, in an unfamiliar hand.

/I'm not at my best with a handgun./ 

Her shadow mocks her, for her preference to a handgun, for her absolute inferiority in this situation. Implied is the statement that chills her already icy blood, her winsome smile mirrored as the shadow tells her that next time, he will not miss.

And then, he stops pretending, hides in the shadows just out of sight but never out of mind, taunting her and haunting her across three continents. 

Her catches her in Istanbul. It is not because she decides to stop running, because she has given up, because she is ready for him. No, he tails her, and she loses him (doesn't lose him), and he corners her in a back alley, stepping out of the shadows cleanly and notching his bow in the same motion. She tugs in a slow, easy breath through her nose, and looks through her options, and finds that she has none. 

Such a situation has occurred ten times. A master beaten by another master (masters of death, keepers of blood ledgers, shadows and spiders, seductresses and spies and liars). The Black Widow inclines her head in a respectful nod, and does not dare to close her eyes. 

He stares right back, fingers straining against the bowstring pressed to his cheek, lips tight, ready for the kill. But the moment does not come. He doesn't take the shot, melting back into shadow with another terse nod.

She releases her breath shakily, and falls to her knees.

And they meet at a ball again, and dance a dance of lies and uncertainties. And he spreads the papers before her, the ones with her name plastered on them. And his. Barton. 

Arrows are his skill and sex is hers, and he is terribly easy to seduce. After that it is terribly easy to hold the knife to his throat. Her shadow laughs like he expected nothing less, and asks if she is going to kill him (of course she is going to kill him, maybe she won't kill him yet, she can't kill him). 

"No." Her voice trembles, her fingers clench, her stomach churns. "Why?" she whispers desperately, a thousand questions all at once.

He tells her about her ledger (blood to stain the oceans red; Drakov's daughter, the hospital fire, Sao Paulo), and his, and he offers her something akin to a second chance (or maybe damnation). And she, she has always known that her ledger is red and her soul is black, and smiles her winsome spider's smile, and accepts. 


End file.
